


Under the desert sun: a prayer on your lips

by anita58straycat



Category: Supernatural
Genre: After the Fall, Coda, Episode Related, Gen, Sacrifice, episode s08e23 - coda
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-05-28
Updated: 2013-05-28
Packaged: 2017-12-13 06:26:40
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 445
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/821091
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/anita58straycat/pseuds/anita58straycat
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p><em>He took his shoes off then, and for the first time in his long existence, he walked the earth as a mortal man.</em><br/> <br/>Castiel's first thoughts after the fall.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Under the desert sun: a prayer on your lips

**Author's Note:**

> The title is inspired by The Good Die Young by Scorpions, which always reminds me of Supernatural and Team Free Will and now more than ever feels right for Cas.

 

* * *

 

The ground is hard beneath his feet… and cold.

He’s seen the last of his brothers and sisters hurtling across the firmament, a shining comet, when the sky had turned to grey at the first rays of dawn and all Heaven had fallen.

He took his shoes off then, and for the first time in his long existence, he walked the earth as a mortal man.

He had lost his powers once before, in the days that led to the Apocalypse-that-never-was, but not once he’d been completely human.  

Now that his grace has been ripped away from him, he finally feels… _everything_.

The leaves, dry in his palms; the cool breeze of the new day on his face.

The world’s suddenly more and less concrete all at once. A dream where colors are too vivid and his eyes can count every single blade of grass, one by one.

Back in his true form he could travel the plans of existence in the blink of an eye, search the corners of the earth in the time between an intake of breath and the other, but… it never felt so scorchingly real, because _he_ wasn’t real: just “a multidimensional wavelength of celestial intent”, as he once said himself.

The world was still a mystery to him, faint and blurred, for the substance of it all he saw as if trapped behind a glass, like a fish in a bowl. An observer, never truly alive.

And when he was still an angel living in Jimmy’s body, his vessel’s skin always felt too tight. The outside world filtered through senses that weren’t his own. So near, and yet constantly out of reach.

He’s fallen now.

Jimmy’s hands are his hands, Jimmy’s eyes his eyes, Jimmy’s heart his heart and at the moment it’s beating so fast it makes it hard to breathe.

He walks in the forest, skin damp and prickling, covered in dew. His breath is warm in the chilly morning.

He doesn’t know where he is, he just keeps putting a foot in front of the other.

There’s a heaviness at the pit of his stomach he doesn’t understand and his cheeks are wet. It comes to him as an afterthought that he must be crying.

A name plays like a music in his head; a troubled face, yet bright green eyes.

He doesn’t know what he’ll say or do when he finds him, but he _will_ find him: of that he’s absolutely certain.

And so he walks… and walks… and walks.

An empty sky hovers above his head and a graceless heart beats wild and furious in his chest.

A name, cherished, on his lips.

 _Dean_.

 

* * *

 

 

 

**Author's Note:**

> Crossposted [here](http://koryuoftheriverflow.tumblr.com/post/51573935438/under-the-desert-sun-a-prayer-on-your-lips) on my tumblr.


End file.
